Hunger Strike 1981

Hunger Strike is to avoid eating in the form of protest and results in death from starvation if done for long periods. Irish History is accustomed to hunger strikes and its martyrs (a person who dies for their beliefs) but once that stands out in modern times is the 1981 Hunger Strike that occurred at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland (a portion of the island of Ireland still under British rule). What happened involved Irish republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze wanted special category status by the British government or they would starve themselves as protest. It wasn't the first time this happened though as a similar protest happened the year before. When the British government refused, Bobby Sands (who was in prison for arms possession) kick-started the strike by refusing food on 1 March 1981 and following the sudden death of Frank Maguire, other prisoners followed. The hunger strike continued until 3rd October 1981 but by then 10 prisoners died as a result of self-imposed starvation. Bobby Sands included.
In the years since the strike and subsequent protests, there have been many memorials to Bobby Sands and his hunger strike comrades like a street in Tehran, Iran being renamed to Bobby Sands Street right on the doorstep of the British Embassy causing the embassy to open an entrance on a different street! A memorial to the strikers can be found almost everywhere in Ireland like a small cenotaph (monument for the deceased who are buried elsewhere) in St Peter and Paul's Cemetery in Portlaoise. There is even a monument to Sands in Hartford, Connecticut in the United States of America complete with the Irish tricolour flying over it.